Guerillas in their midst

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Celebrity spruiking has brought even more glamour to the
Venice Biennale, writes Peter Hill.

More than any other biennale, this has been the biennale of the
celebrity spruiker. Bjork was doing her crazy stuff at the
Icelandic pavilion; Harry Dean Stanton was strolling moodily around
Ed Ruscha's exhibition at the US pavilion; and Gilbert and George,
in their dapper new suits, had the vocal support of Rufus
Wainwright at the British pavilion - and Frieze magazine
enlisted Jarvis Cocker as their party-night DJ.

But none of them drew the international media quite as much as
Cate Blanchett, who made a warm and intelligent speech for her
friend Ricky Swallow from the balcony of Australia's pavilion at
last Thursday's opening.

It didn't stop there. Later that evening, at the lavish party
thrown by the Australia Council at the legendary Cipriani Hotel,
Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, with bad girl of Brit-Art, Tracey Emin
on his arm, came to pay tribute to Swallow.

The next day, British artist Damien Hirst spent a long time
looking hard at Swallow's beautifully carved artefacts: a table
writhing with sea creatures from fish to crustaceans; a full-sized
skeleton carved from the same block of wood as the chair on which
it reclines; a cycling helmet that morphs in to a nest of vipers;
and one of the most popular pieces judging by the queues of people,
a life-size beanbag with a carved wooden skull nestling in its
centre.

Australians are in bigger numbers than I have previously seen -
artists, curators, dealers and a large group of collectors on a
package put together by commissioner John Kaldor, known for
bringing Jeff Koon's Puppy to the forecourt of Sydney's
Museum of Contemporary Art and bankrolling Christo's Wrapped
Coastline. Each collector, apparently, receives a Swallow print
as part of the deal - and invitations to all of the parties.

So is Venice too much about parties and not enough about the
art? Most people seem to be enjoying both to the full,
power-walking around artworks that really beg for quiet
contemplation, then networking in to the small hours.

What is memorable? The Italian pavilion has some stand-out work
including a whole room of Francis Bacons, many of which I had never
seen.

Another room is plump with the canvases of the late, great
Philip Guston, and a firework display of multi-coloured paintings
by Bernhard Frize, not far from a wall of darkly disturbing
portraits by Marlene Dumas. But the new German painting is also
represented in the astonishing canvases of Matthias Weischer.

Cate Blanchett opened the exhibition of her friend Ricky Swallow in the Australian pavilion.Photo:AP

If it's installation and video you are after, the Arsinale is
the place to be. Almost a kilometre long, this historic chain
factory is mentioned in Dante's Inferno. Here you will see
everything from a survey of work by the feminist Guerrilla Girls,
who aren't afraid to get stuck in to the current biennale's lack of
African artists, to key works by Jimmie Durham, Louise Bourgeois,
Samuel Beckett (strange but true), Mariko Mori and Australia's own
Leigh Bowery.

One clever super fiction is sited at the side of the Grand Canal
and most tourists, art critics and artists walk straight past it
"tut-tutting" at its presence and not realising it is art.
Scandinavian artist Annika Eriksson, in a remarkable Duchampian
move similar to placing a snow shovel in a gallery, presents an
entire games arcade, with all its visual and aural tackiness,
containing about 30 machines. Anyone can front up and play for free
- few did.

Close by, PS1 (New York's leading contemporary art space) and
the New York Museum of Modern Art have set up a floating radio
station broadcasting 24-hour interviews and news items to the rest
of the world via the internet. You, too, can listen in on
WPS1.org

But not everyone is happy or in party mood. Italian artists are
complaining that the Italian pavilion contains the work of not a
single Italian artist.

Italians are less visible than Africans at their own event.
Where are Francesco Clemente or Enzo Cucchi? They would have looked
splendid next to Guston and Tapies.